use Devel::Peek qw( Dump );
Dump($db_field);  # Output sent to STDERR

##</code><code>##

259: PV = 0x18e914c "\304\203"\0 [UTF8 "\x{103}"]
238: PV = 0x18e914c "\356"\0

259: PV = 0x18e914c "\304\203"\0 [UTF8 "\x{103}"]
238: PV = 0x18ecffc "\303\256"\0 [UTF8 "\x{ee}"]

259: PV = 0x18d73fc "?"\0
238: PV = 0x18d7444 "\356"\0

259: PV = 0x18d736c "\304\203"\0
238: PV = 0x18ecffc "\303\256"\0

259: PV = 0x18d74dc "\304\203"\0     <- Lack of [UTF8 ...]
238: PV = 0x18d74dc "\356"\0

##</code><code>##

259: PV = 0x18e914c "\304\203"\0 [UTF8 "\x{103}"]
238: PV = 0x18e914c "\356"\0

##</code><code>##

259: PV = 0x18e914c "\304\203"\0 [UTF8 "\x{103}"]
238: PV = 0x18ecffc "\303\256"\0 [UTF8 "\x{ee}"]

##</code><code>##

use Encode qw( encode );
print(encode('UTF-8', $text));

##</code><code>##

binmode(STDOUT, ':encoding(UTF-8)');
print($text);

##</code><code>##

259: PV = 0x18d73fc "?"\0
238: PV = 0x18d7444 "\356"\0

##</code><code>##

259: PV = 0x18d736c "\304\203"\0
238: PV = 0x18ecffc "\303\256"\0

##</code><code>##

259: PV = 0x18d74dc "\304\203"\0     <- Lack of [UTF8 ...]
238: PV = 0x18d74dc "\356"\0